He did know, however; that is, he knew that she was in communication with foreign socialists and had, or believed she had, irons on the fire—that she held in her hand some of the strings that are pulled in great movements. She received letters that made Madame Grandoni watch her askance, of which, though she knew nothing of their contents and had only her general suspicions and her scent for disaster, now become constant, the old woman had spoken more than once to Hyacinth. Madame Grandoni had begun to have sombre visions of the interference of the police: she was haunted with the idea of a search for compromising papers; of being dragged, herself, as an accomplice in direful plots, into a court of justice—possibly into a prison. “If she would only burn—if she would only burn! But she keeps—I know she keeps!” she groaned to Hyacinth, in her helpless gloom. Hyacinth could only guess what it might be that she kept; asking himself whether she were seriously entangled, were being exploited by revolutionary Bohemians, predatory adventurers who counted on her getting frightened at a given moment and offering hush-money to be allowed to slip out (out of a complicity which they, of course, would never have taken seriously); or were merely coquetting with paper schemes, giving herself cheap sensations, discussing preliminaries which, for her, could have no second stage. It would have been easy for Hyacinth to smile at the Princess’s impression that she was ‘in it’, and to conclude that even the cleverest women do not know when they are superficial, had not the vibration remained which had been imparted to his nerves two years before, of which he had spoken to his hostess at Medley—the sense, vividly kindled and never quenched, that the forces secretly arrayed against the present social order were pervasive and universal, in the air one breathed, in the ground one trod, in the hand of an acquaintance that one might touch, or the eye of a stranger that might rest a moment upon one’s own. They were above, below, within, without, in every contact and combination of life; and it was no disproof of them to say it was too odd that they should lurk in a particular improbable form. To lurk in improbable forms was precisely their strength, and they would doubtless exhibit much stranger incidents than this of the Princess’s being a genuine participant even when she flattered herself that she was.
“You do go too far,” Hyacinth said to her, the evening Lady Aurora had passed him at the door.
To which she answered, “Of course I do—that’s exactly what I mean. How else does one know one has gone far enough? That poor, dear woman! She’s an angel, but she isn’t in the least in it,” she added, in a moment. She would give him no further satisfaction on the subject; when he pressed her she inquired whether he had brought the copy of Browning that he had promised the last time. If he had, he was to sit down and read it to her. In such a case as this Hyacinth had no disposition to insist; he was glad enough not to talk about the everlasting nightmare. He took Men and Women from his pocket, and read aloud for half an hour; but on his making some remark on one of the poems, at the end of this time he perceived the Princess had been paying no attention. When he charged her with this levity she only replied, looking at him musingly, “How can one, after all, go too far? That’s a word of cowards.”
“Do you mean her ladyship is a coward?”
“Yes, in not having the courage of her opinions, of her conclusions. The way the English can go half-way to a thing, and then stick in the middle!” the Princess exclaimed, impatiently.
“That’s not your fault, certainly!” said Hyacinth. “But it seems to me that Lady Aurora, for herself, goes pretty far.”
“We are all afraid of some things, and brave about others,” the Princess went on.
“The thing Lady Aurora is most afraid of is the Princess Casamassima,” Hyacinth remarked.
His companion looked at him, but she did not take this up. “There is one particular in which she would be very brave. She would marry her friend—your friend—Mr Muniment.”
“Marry him, do you think?”